English

The Fibonacci Sequence and Schreier-Zeckendorf Sets

Number Theory 2020-11-30 v3

Abstract

A finite subset of the natural numbers is weak-Schreier if minSS\min S \ge |S|, strong-Schreier if minS>S\min S>|S|, and maximal if minS=S\min S = |S|. Let MnM_n be the number of weak-Schreier sets with nn being the largest element and (Fn)n1(F_n)_{n\geq -1} denote the Fibonacci sequence. A finite set is said to be Zeckendorf if it does not contain two consecutive natural numbers. Let EnE_n be the number of Zeckendorf subsets of {1,2,,n}\{1,2,\ldots,n\}. It is well-known that En=Fn+2E_n = F_{n+2}. In this paper, we first show four other ways to generate the Fibonacci sequence from counting Schreier sets. For example, let CnC_n be the number of weak-Schreier subsets of {1,2,,n}\{1,2,\ldots,n\}. Then Cn=Fn+2C_n = F_{n+2}. To understand why Cn=EnC_n = E_n, we provide a bijective mapping to prove the equality directly. Next, we prove linear recurrence relations among the number of Schreier-Zeckendorf sets. Lastly, we discover the Fibonacci sequence by counting the number of subsets of {1,2,,n}\{1,2,\ldots, n\} such that two consecutive elements in increasing order always differ by an odd number.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1906.10962,
  title  = {The Fibonacci Sequence and Schreier-Zeckendorf Sets},
  author = {Hung Viet Chu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1906.10962},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

12 pages, published in J. Integer Seq; In the reference, I added A. Bird as the author of a blog post mentioned in the paper

R2 v1 2026-06-23T10:03:58.529Z